Historical and Genealogical Miscellany, Volume 2

Historical and Genealogical Miscellany, Volume 2. John E. Stillwell, M.D.. (1903-1932) 2006. These five volumes, two providing a wide range of colonial source material and three presenting compiled genealogies,

constitute at the same time an essential reference work for Monmouth County, New Jersey, and an important broader source for the early years of New Jersey, New York and New England.The author began the work as a study of the Stillwell family, but soon discovered that he needed to broaden his research to many related and associated families, and so ended up with a collection of materials on many records and families of Monmouth County. He also went beyond this to include data on these same families in their earlier residences in New York and New England. Many of the early residents of the county came from Long Island and Rhode Island.The bulk of the material in the first two volumes consists of transcripts of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century church records, town records and land records for Monmouth County, New Jersey, and for its two earliest towns, Shrewsbury and Middletown. There are in addition court records from Staten Island, from the West Riding of Yorkshire on Long Island (covering what are now Staten Island and Kings County), from Burlington County, New Jersey, and from Cape May, New Jersey. There are also church and census records from Staten Island.In the final three volumes of the set, Stillwell sets forth compiled genealogies for about fifty Monmouth County families. In most cases he provides details on the arrival of the families in North America, and their earlier history before coming to New Jersey. Especially in the early generations, these sketches have much biographical material, in most instances supported by extracts from or references to contemporary source material. In some instances there are even extracts from English records, giving the origins of some families before arriving in the New World.